


Touched by Fire

by Maulindath



Series: Pieces of Panem [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-09
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-08-21 06:32:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16571450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maulindath/pseuds/Maulindath
Summary: "Cinna's father is a Victor and that makes a world of difference."Cinna, in life and in death.





	Touched by Fire

**Author's Note:**

> We don't know a lot about Cinna, truly. And yet, looking back, he has a major impact on Katniss and the Hunger Games story. He pretty much created the Girl on Fire.
> 
> The story would have been very different without him, I think. 
> 
> And so I wrote this, as a way to try and figure him out.

Cinna is four when he learns he is not like the other Capitol children. 

It's not that his skin is dark. There are others in the city whose skin is as dark or even darker that his own. They are rare, but he sees them, few as they are. Often they wear their differences like an ornament, no modifications visible. Sometimes they do. There is one he has drawn over and over again, childish strokes becoming more assured as his talent grows. Dark, dark skin, and vivid orange eyes and yellow eyeliner that climbs up his temples, and shining silvery dots along the planes of his face that look like they shimmer and shift with the light. 

It's not that he lives with his mother alone, either. It happens often, in the Capitol. Adults wishing for children but not for exclusivity or a family. Some share them, the way one would share a toy, raise them between neighbours. Cinna's mother doesn't, though, the same way that she rarely brings someone home and even more rarely disappears for a night. She keeps him for herself, fiercely, jealously, barely accepts her own parent's presence. Cinna doesn't mind. Out of all the Capitol adults he's met, he likes Mama best.

It's that he only gets to see his father (his Babba, though he is forbidden to say the word out loud and can only use it in his head) during the Games. The man comes, a few days every year, and Mama smiles more, welcomes him with a biting kiss and soft hands and he always responds with an indifferent face and burning eyes, voice low and touches warm. He's a tall, dark man, and Mama cooks strange, simple dishes for him, thick stews and crunchy soft veggies and roasted fruits that Cinna likes better that the usual rich foods they eat. They'll watch the Games together, and there are no laughs, no bets. Instead there is his father, solemn and stern, and his mother, sad and silent, and him, who looks and doesn't understand. School teaches that the Games are joyful, and just, and necessary.

This, though, feels like a funeral.

(Cinna's father is a Victor and that makes a world of difference. Cina's father is a Victor, and still needs to be bought by the mother of his child in order to see them. Cinna's father is a Victor, and so Cinna never learns to see the Games as such.

Cinna's father is a Victor, and his silence teaches his son the massacre they truly are instead.)

Cinna is twelve when he learns that the Capitol shows no mercy.

His father never shows up when the Games open, and Caesar Flickerman looks terribly sad as he weaves a tale of a farming accident, tells the story of the Eleven Victor who survived the forest fire against all ods by finding a small underwater cave, who managed to bring two of his thirty tributes to victory, who found love in his district and fathered three children ( _four, not three_ , but Cinna is not allowed to say it) only to lose one of them to the Games. _The Victor's family is not exempt from the Games, see. The Capitol is fair and does not distinguish between people, see_.

His mother dies of a morphling overdose in a stranger's bed despite having never touched morphling in her life as far as Cinna knows, and Cinna is taken in by grandparents who look as if they have no idea what to make of him. It's fair, as he is just as unsure of them. In the end, they settle for polite distance, and discreet approval of his drawings in the form of watercolor paints and glittery inks left on his desk. They don't spend a lot of time together, grandparents often gone to this or that party, and Cinna is grateful for the space. Unlike his mother, they love the Games, are notable sponsors, and he always finds himself queasy when they discuss them. It feels wrong, their enthusiasm. He misses the solemn mood of his parents.

He misses his parents.

(Cinna's parents were not as discreet as they hoped, and they ended up paying the price. Some bitterness towards the Games is to be expected from a Victor, especially one who has not benefited from a Career's education, but not that much. Refusing to dance to the tune is not tolerated. Forming an almost relationship with the woman who bought him for a few nights and decided to keep his child is worse. 

If Cinna had not been born, they might have lived, her an Avox, him a broken puppet of a Victor. But Cinna is born, and so they have to die. Free thinkers are dangerous enough on their own. They can't be allowed to influence children.

The Capitol doesn't know it yet, but it's already too late.)

Cinna is sixteen when the Games catch up to him.

Cinna is in Fashion school, surrounded by others full of laughs, colors and modifications, and he has just been told he has been selected for the Stylism track. Stylism, and not Design, and he wonders who fails so much at reading that they didn't notice he never has applied for Stylism (they all know how to read. They also know, but don't tell him, that his name has been suggested by people they have no wish to anger). Still, he has no choice but to accept, and suddenly the Games fill his life. They study the Districts, the different costumes which have been made, what's best for the Parade, what's best for the Interview, what's best for the Victor's Tour and what's best for the Fallen's Tribute (Fallen's Tribute. Cinna barely holds back a snort, the first time he hears it called that. Babba called it the Loser's Viewing, and Cinna can see it. Children prettily dressed in such a way as to hide how they died and bring attention to their youth and beauty, as if they hadn't been disrespected enough already), and Cinna is good at it.

Cinna also hates it. He has made a few friends, Effie and her unusual softness so out of place even amongst the Design track, Portia and her easy laugh and flowing dresses, Romus and his confident swagger who designs beautifully soft clothes, sober and full of each District's colors, when they are given a Fallen's Tribute _(Loser's Viewing)_ assignment. He has made a few enemies as well, disdainful as he can be of too much nudity, of those who oversexualise the Tributes and try to sell them as sex rather than stories. Still, over all, it's not as bad as he expected it to be, and he finds that he can get away with more than a few controversial designs. It's not what he expected it to be, but it's alright. It could be worse. He can even dream of the day his clothes will tell such a story to the viewers that they will rise with the Tributes who wore them.

(Cinna's teachers love him, and end up locked in a debate every time they discuss his designs. They are controversial, but then, so is Cinna, with his simple black clothing and lack of body modification. He is a breath of fresh air for them, a stylist who thinks and will gladly go off the beaten path when he designs, someone who will freshen up Tribute fashion.

Cinna's teachers also fear for him. They haven't forgotten how he ended up in the Stylism track, and they know, the same way that those who have dealt with the Games for years know, that the privileges given to Capitol citizens only go so far. They still allow him to graduate, and have him become one of the numerous hands who craft the clothes District Stylists design. It will allow him to gain the construction know-how and showmanship that he tends to forget to take into account, consumed by purity of design as he is. 

That's what they say, at least. Truth is, they hope he will forget his talent and stay there, hidden and safe. His designs would be missed, but after a few years, no one would complain should he quit and become a Designer, work for the Capitol instead of the Games. This way at least, his vision would live on.

Cinna's vision will always survive him, no matter what. But of course they have no way of knowing that.)

Cinna is twenty-nine when he meets his muse.

Katniss Everdeen has volunteered to save her sister. Katniss Everdeen is a small slip of a girl with defiant grey eyes, olive skin and thick dark hair, and Cinna starts to draw as soon as he sees her. Here she is, the one he was waiting for, the one who will give life to his designs, the one whose story he'll help craft. She is coal, but Cinna plans on turning her not to diamond (that belong to District One, and he refuses to sully her the way One's stylist so love to do) but to fire. He will take that will of hers, that fiery determination, and put it outside for all to see, and so he does. And so the Capitol falls in love with the Girl on Fire. And so Cinna falls alongside them. He had requested District Twelve as a way to challenge himself, to see if his designs could make a difference. Through her, he gains his answer.

Katniss Everdeen is a Victor, and she has made the Gamemakers bow to her will, and so she will pay the price the way his parents did. Cinna knows it, as he designs wedding gown after wedding gown, designs so many clothes even he starts to lose track of them, and helps his Girl on Fire pass some off as hers. He designs armor in secret, inspired by not so innocent comments Fluvia makes, he takes the wedding gown the Capitol so loves and changes it, makes it into more, and he knows all the while that he is commiting treason. That he is proud of commiting treason. And so Cinna draws, and Cinna sews, and when the time comes for Katniss to spin in her wedding dress and be reborn from the flames a Mockingjay the way old stories said phoenixes did, Cinna smiles and silently says his goodbyes.

Katniss Everdeen will change the world, and Cinna has just ensured that there will be others who rise alongside her. 

_Katniss will set the world on fire, and make it rise from its own ashes._

(Cinna's parents were sentenced to death because they lived outside the box that had been chosen for them, and their son followed in their footsteps, rose above all expectations and helped start a revolution. Cinna thinks they would have been proud.

Cinna knows he is proud.

Katniss will live, and so his vision will live as well, far beyond their lifetimes. The Girl on Fire will live on and through her legend Cinna will live on as well.)

Cinna is not yet thirty when he dies.

They have interrogated him, have broken his fingers, have done their utmost to break his spirit. They have threatened, and blackmailed, and tortured, and still Cinna does not break. He thinks of his father's Games, of the forest fire and the underwater cave, and the burned bodies of the other Tributes children. He thinks of his mother's smile, quicksilver fast, when she saw his father. He thinks of Katniss, with her gray eyes and the fire in her soul, of the way she made them all fall to their knees in admiration. He thinks of Mockingjays and of fire that renews what it touches, and he keeps his head high even when they bring him outside and shoot him.

Cinna's body is riddled with bullets, and still Cinna is smiling.

(Cinna will live on through the Girl on Fire but his body will never be laid to rest. 

They need bodies to create mutts after all. And so Cinna's ideas live on through the Girl on Fire, and so his body will be twisted to oppose her. Unmade till it becomes that of a lizard haunting the sewers of the Capitol, its voice a rasp that keeps repeating the name of his muse.

Cinna will never know it but he will take Finnick with him. A Victor's son deprived of his father will deprive another Victor's son of his father. History repeating itself.

History will never repeat itself. 

_And Cinna's name will never be forgotten_.)


End file.
